Quantcast

Queens district attorney marks 10 years in office


“We have…

By Chris Fuchs

Praising his office as one of the most respected in the state, Richard Brown celebrated his 10th year as the Queens district attorney, hosting a dinner at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in East Elmhurst attended by 450 current and former staffers.

“We have accomplished a great, great deal,” Brown said. “And in the process, we’ve continued to see double-digit reductions in the crime rate, in virtually every category and in virtually every precinct.”

Admitted to the New York bar 45 years ago, Brown worked for former Mayor John V. Lindsay in the early 1970s as his legislative representative in Albany. In 1979, Gov. Hugh L. Carey chose Brown as his counsel, a position he held before beginning a 16-year career on the bench. There, he served as a criminal court judge, a supreme court justice and an associate justice of the Appellate Division. He was appointed district attorney by then-Gov. Mario Cuomo in 1991 and has been reelected ever since.

In his remarks at the Crowne Plaza hotel last Thursday, Brown spoke about his office’s high trial conviction rate while managing to keep its case load down. He also mentioned that his office in the past couple of years has argued two cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, an accomplishment most district attorneys’ offices might achieve in a lifetime.

“Our relationship with our law enforcement colleagues — federal, state and local — has never been better,” he said. “We have the best arrest-to-arraignment time in the city. We have no appellate backlog. Our judges, on both the trial and the appellate level, continue to praise the level of our professionalism.”

In recent years, one of the grisliest, most disturbing cases Brown’s office has handled was the 2000 Wendy’s massacre in Flushing, which left five workers dead and two others wounded. Within days of the crime, the police arrested two suspects, one of whom pleaded guilty earlier this year and is serving five consecutive life terms in prison.

Looking ahead, Brown said his office must continue to drive the crime rate down, making sure to be increasingly mindful of the borough’s diversity.

“We’ve got to continue to be responsive to the victims of crime and to the diverse communities of our county,” he said. “And we’ve got to continue to maintain the respect of the law enforcement community with whom we work and the confidence of the residents of Queens County whom we serve.”

Reach reporter Chris Fuchs by e-mail at Timesledgr@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 156.